The global death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 3 million people Saturday as confirmed cases surge to over 140 million, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

The somber milestones arise at a time when vaccine distribution efforts have stumbled after concerns over the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

“This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic, where we have proven control measures,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) leaders on COVID-19.

MODERNA CEO STEPHANE BANCEL TELLS MARIA BARTIROMO VACCINE BOOSTER SHOTS ‘AR GOING TO BE REQUIRED’

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) decided Thursday to forgo a vote regarding guidance on the jab after it recommended a pause on using the J&J vaccine following six cases of a rare, severe blood clot reported among nearly 7 million recipients.

The vaccination effort had started to hit a stride, surpassing President Biden’s original goal of 100 million jabs in his first 100 days in office. Approximately 66 million Americans had been fully vaccinated as of April 8 — just shy of 20% of the total population.

JOHSON & JOHNSON COVID-19 VACCINE PAUSE SIGN ‘SAFETY SYSTEM IS WORKING FOR YOU,’ MURTHY SAYS

Dr. Anthony Fauci said that he hopes the CDC will soon announce new guidance regarding the J&J vaccine so that distribution can continue. 

Vaccination campaigns had only just started in the U.S. and Europe back in January when the world crossed the threshold of 2 million deaths, but today more than 190 countries are pushing through the process.

SEVENTH CLOT CASE INVOLVING JOHNSON & JOHNSON COVID-19 VACCINE REVEALED

That process is similarly plagued by issues with vaccine development: China health officials announced last week that vaccines developed by Sinovac and Sinopharm “don’t have very high protective rates.”

The vaccines had already been exported to 22 countries, including Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil — some of the current hot spots of the pandemic.

Brazil is the third-hardest hit nation in the world, with around 13.8 million confirmed cases; however, it has recorded 368,749 deaths — the second-most worldwide.

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At least one WHO official referred to Brazil’s crises as a “raging inferno.”

Global deaths have hit a running average of 12,000 per day.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/health/worldwide-covid-deaths-3-million

Vigils are scheduled Saturday in Indianapolis for the eight victims, who were between the ages of 19 and 74. Authorities identified the victims late Friday as Matthew R. Alexander, 32; Samaria Blackwell, 19; Amarjeet Johal, 66; Jaswinder Kaur, 64; Jaswinder Singh, 68; Amarjit Sekhon, 48; Karli Smith, 19; and John Weisert, 74. A family member gave a different age for Sekhon — 49 — and a different age and name spelling for Jasvinder Kaur, age 50.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/17/fedex-shooting-indianapolis/

Iran named a suspect Saturday in the attack on its Natanz nuclear facility that damaged centrifuges there, saying he had fled the country “hours before” the sabotage happened.

While the extent of the damage from the April 11 sabotage remains unclear, it comes as Iran tries to negotiate with world powers over allowing the U.S. to re-enter its tattered nuclear deal with world powers and lift the economic sanctions it faces.

Already, Iran has begun enriching uranium up to 60% purity in response — three times higher than ever before, though in small quantities. The sabotage and Iran’s response to it also have further inflamed tensions across the Mideast, where a shadow war between Tehran and Israel, the prime suspect in the sabotage, still rages.

State television named the suspect as 43-year-old Reza Karimi. It showed a passport-style photograph of a man it identified as Karimi, saying he was born in the nearby city of Kashan, Iran.

IRAN STARTS ENRICHING URANIUM TO 60%, ITS HIGHEST LEVEL EVER

The report also aired what appeared to be an Interpol “red notice” seeking his arrest. The arrest notice was not immediately accessible on Interpol’s public-facing database. Interpol, based in Lyon, France, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The TV report said “necessary actions” are underway to bring Karimi back to Iran through legal channels, without elaborating. The supposed Interpol “red notice” listed his foreign travel history as including Ethiopia, Kenya, the Netherlands, Qatar, Romania, Turkey, Uganda and the United Arab Emirates.

The report did not elaborate how Karimi would have gotten access to one of the most secure facilities in the Islamic republic. However, for the first time authorities acknowledged that an explosion had struck the Natanz facility.

There was a “limited explosion of a small part of the electricity-feeding path to the centrifuges’ hall,” the TV report said. “The explosion happened because of the function of explosive materials and there was no cyberattack.”

Initial reports in Israeli media, which maintain close relations to its military and intelligence services, blamed a cyberattack for the damage.

This satellite photo provided from Planet Labs Inc. shows Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. Iran began enriching uranium Friday, April 16, 2021, to its highest level ever at Natanz, edging closer to weapons-grade levels to pressure talks in Vienna aimed at restoring its nuclear deal with world powers after an attack on the site. (Planet Labs via AP)

IRAN’S SUPREME LEADER: VIENNA OFFERS ‘NOT WORTH LOOKING AT’

The Iranian state TV report also said there were images that corroborated the account of an explosion rather than cyberattack offered by security services, but it did not broadcast those pictures.

The report also showed centrifuges in a hall, as well as what appeared to be caution tape up at the Natanz facility. In one shot, a TV reporter interviewed an unnamed technician, who was shown from behind — likely a safety measure as Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in suspected Israeli-orchestrated attacks in the past.

“The sound that you are hearing is the sound of operating machines that are fortunately undamaged,” he said, the high-pitched whine of the centrifuges heard in the background. “Many of the centrifuge chains that faced defects are now under control. Part of the work that had been disrupted will be back on track with the round-the-clock efforts of my colleagues.”

INSIDE IRAN’S TORTURE PRISONS: TEHRAN QUICK TO JAIL THOSE WITH PRO-ISRAEL TIES

In Vienna, negotiations continued over the deal Saturday. The 2015 accord, which former President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from in 2018, prevented Iran from stockpiling enough high-enriched uranium to be able to pursue a nuclear weapon if it chose in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.

Iran insists its nuclear program is peaceful, though the West and the IAEA say Tehran had an organized military nuclear program up until the end of 2003. An annual U.S. intelligence report released Tuesday maintained the longtime American assessment that Iran isn’t currently trying to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran previously had said it could use uranium enriched up to 60% for nuclear-powered ships. However, Iran currently has no such ships in its navy.

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The attack at Natanz was initially described only as a blackout in its electrical grid — but later Iranian officials began calling it an attack.

One Iranian official referred to “several thousand centrifuges damaged and destroyed” in a state TV interview. However, no other official has offered that figure and no images of the aftermath have been released.

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-names-suspect-natanz-attack

Activists in Chicago are calling for the resignation of Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown following the release of bodycam footage that shows an officer fatally shooting 13-year-old Adam Toledo, CBS Chicago reported

Protesters marched throughout the city Thursday after the city’s police oversight agency released footage of the fatal shooting on March 29 in the Little Village neighborhood. They criticized Lightfoot’s slow response to release information, including the officer’s name, throughout the week. 

Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, said the mayor needs to redirect funds away from the police department and back to the community. 

“The police department has a $1.7 billion budget. They keep taking the money from our kids to give it over to the police department. We’re saying enough is enough. Today, we ask for justice for Adam, justice for all those individuals that are being killed by police officers,” Enriquez said Thursday. “It’s a shame that these police officers, instead of protecting us, are killing us. This is how they treat little village because we’re Mexican and because we’re Brown.”

Before the video’s release to the public, Lightfoot called on a change to the Chicago Police Department’s foot pursuit policies. “These videos and these moments are never easy to bear witness to,” Lightfoot said. “Adam’s death is a forceful reminder that we cannot delay these efforts any longer.”

A resident lights a candle where 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot by police in Chicago on April 16, 2021.

Shafkat Anowar / AP


But Enriquez isn’t convinced those reforms will be enough. “It is time to defund the police and it’s time to abolish the police,” Enriquez added. “Let’s begin from a fresh start. Let’s begin with our input. Let’s begin with our opinions.”

Protests will continue throughout the week. They also have plans to gather outside of Lightfoot’s home to make their message heard, CBS Chicago reported.

“They say we need more money for training,” said Reina Pienses, a Little Village resident. “And the thing is that they’re showing us that that training is for shooting and killing us. They trained to shoot and kill. That’s what we’re seeing here and we’re tired of that.”

Source Article from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/adam-toledo-shooting-chicago-lori-lightfoot-resignation-call-activists/

A top Ukrainian general said his troops are “ready” for any Russian military assault as concern grows over Moscow’s build-up of troops on the countries’ borders.

His comments come as tensions between the countries are increasing away from the frontline as well, after Russia’s FSB security service said it had detained a Ukrainian diplomat for receiving sensitive information from a Russian national.

Russia has massed tens of thousands of troops by Ukraine’s eastern border, including deployments of tanks, rocket artillery and air defense systems. Moscow said this is in response to NATO deployments and has suggested the measures are temporary.

However, as part of the biggest Russian military buildup since 2014—when Moscow annexed Crimea—the movements have raised the specter of another incursion into Ukrainian territory.

Major General Viktor Ganushchak, the deputy commander of what Ukraine calls its Joint Forces Operation, has said his troops are prepared for the Kremlin’s next move.

A Ukrainian serviceman in Schastya, Lugansk region, near the frontline with Russia backed separatists on April 16, 2021. Russia has been building up a military presence on its border with Ukraine.
Getty Images

“We are ready for the assault if it will happen,” he told a briefing near the frontline, according to The Telegraph, “We can see the increase in the number of troops and equipment on our border but we cannot say for certain.”

“We cannot make any kind of forecast. But they are bringing battalion tactical groups to our border,” he added.

Adding to the distrust between Moscow and Kyiv was the detention of Oleksandr Sosoniuk from Ukraine’s consulate general in St. Petersburg.

The FSB said on Saturday that Sosoniuk had been detained for obtaining classified information from databases belonging to the FSB and law enforcement.

“This activity is incompatible with the status of a diplomatic worker and has a clear hostile character towards the Russian Federation,” the FSB said in a statement, according to news agency Tass.

Russia has detained Ukrainian nationals on suspicion of spying before but the detention of a diplomat is rare. As the news agency noted, under the Vienna Convention, diplomats have immunity in the country in which they work but can be declared persona non grata “in the event of a violation of the law or hostile actions.”

Meanwhile, Russian foreign ministry sources told the newspaper Kommersantthat the envoy is likely to be expelled.

“The question is whether he will be declared persona non grata or will be limited to a statement about the undesirability of further stay in the country,” one source told the paper.

Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister Yevhen Yenin denied Russian accusations that Sosoniuk had received secret information, telling the Ukraine 24 TV channel that his detention was part of a “brutal provocation” against the background of the Russian troop build-up, Hromadske reported.

Meanwhile, Oleg Nikolenko, a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said that circumstances of the detention were being investigated and that Kyiv, “was preparing a response,” RIA Novosti reported.

In a statement to Newsweek, a Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesperson said: “We absolutely reject the accusations made against the consular officer.”

“In response to this provocation, a senior diplomat of the Russian Embassy in Kyiv has been ordered to leave the territory of Ukraine within 72 hours, starting April 19.”

This story has been updated to include a statement to Newsweek from Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

Source Article from https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-troops-diplomat-1584394

This story was originally published on April 16, 2021

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The fate of Derek Chauvin should be in the hands of the jury by Monday afternoon. Monday morning both sides will give their closing arguments and then the jury begins deliberations. They’ll be sequestered, meaning they’ll spend the night in a hotel and be escorted by deputies to and from the courthouse.

READ MORE: Families Of Those Killed By Police Rally, Share Collective Pain In Wake Of Daunte Wright’s Death

Should Chauvin be found not guilty on all charges, he will walk out of the courtroom a free man. If he is convicted on any of the three counts, he will be immediately taken into custody.

“Right from the courtroom, he will go to jail and he will be held in jail until sentencing. If there is a prison sentence, which of course there would be, he would go to prison,” attorney Joe Tamburino said.

Chauvin is charged with second-degree murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter in the death of Floyd. Under sentencing guidelines, he could get 12 and a half years on either second-degree unintentional murder or third-degree murder. Second-degree manslaughter would be four years.

If there is a conviction the jury will have a second job to do. The jury will have to go back and deliberate on whether any aggravating factors existed.

The first possible aggravating factor is whether the victim was “treated with particular cruelty.” The second is if a child was present. Witnesses at the scene and who testified included two teens who were 17 at the time, as well as a 9-year-old.

“If they find aggravating factors the judge could go all the way up to the statutory maximum, which for count one is up to 40 years, count two up to 25 years, and count three up to 10 years,” Tamburino said.

If Chauvin is in fact acquitted he still could face federal criminal civil rights charges. A grand jury has been meeting to consider those charges, and if he were to be charged and convicted in federal court, that sentence could be up to life in prison.

——-

READ MORE: Derek Chauvin Trial, April 15: Chauvin Says He Won’t Testify, Both Sides Rest Their Case

Since the trial began last month, the prosecution called 38 people. This week, the defense took over, and called seven people to testify in court. Derek Chauvin was not one of them. On Thursday, he invoked his constitutional right not to testify. It was a decision that came without the jury present.

Jurors will hear an instruction that they can not hold Chauvin’s decision not to testify against him.

The first defense witnesses testified about a May 2019 arrest of Floyd in which video showed he initially did not comply. He also swallowed pills he later said were Percocet.

The defense has repeatedly stressed Chauvin was distracted and fearful of bystanders at the scene. The defense called Minneapolis Park Police officer Peter Chang, who testified the crowd was intimidating.

“I was concerned about the officers’ safety because of the crowd. I just wanted to make sure the officers were OK,” he said.

During their case, the prosecution brought on experts and a half-dozen Minneapolis Police officers, including Chief Medaria Arradondo, to testify Chauvin used excessive force, even deadly force on Floyd. The defense countered with a single expert Barry Brodd.

“I felt Derek Chauvin was justified in acting with the objective reasonableness following Minneapolis Police Department policy and current standards of law enforcement,” Brodd said.

Finally the defense brought in their own medical expert to testify there were so many factors involved in Floyd’s death — including his drug use, heart conditions, possible carbon monoxide poisoning as well as the police restraint — that the manner of death simply could not be determined.

MORE NEWS: Here Are Some Possible Reasons Derek Chauvin Didn’t Testify

The defense is hoping to create reasonable doubt in at least one juror’s mind.

Source Article from https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/04/17/what-happens-if-derek-chauvin-is-convicted-or-if-hes-acquitted/

About

Suzette Smith is a journalist from Detroit, Michigan. She’s been covering the Portland art scene for 10 years and writes a newsletter about remote art called Art Snack Portland. Follow her on Twitter: @suzettesmith.

Source Article from https://www.wweek.com/news/2021/04/17/marchers-set-fire-at-apple-store-and-shatter-windows-across-downtown-portland-after-police-killing/

The shooter was identified as Brandon Scott Hole, 19, of Indianapolis, Deputy Police Chief Craig McCartt told a news conference. Investigators searched a home in Indianapolis associated with Hole and seized evidence, including desktop computers and other electronic media, McCartt said.

Hole began firing randomly at people in the parking lot of the FedEx facility late Thursday, killing four, before entering the building, fatally shooting four more people and then turning the gun on himself, McCartt said. He said he did not know if Hole owned the gun legally.

“There was no confrontation with anyone that was there,” he said. “There was no disturbance, there was no argument. He just appeared to randomly start shooting.”

McCartt said the slayings took place in a matter of minutes, and that there were at least 100 people in the facility at the time. Many were changing shifts or were on their dinner break, he said. Several people were wounded, including five who were taken to the hospital.

“You deserved so much better than this,” a man who identified himself as the grandson of Johal tweeted Friday evening. Johal had planned to work a double shift Thursday so she could take Friday off, according to the grandson, who would not give his full name but identifies himself as “Komal” on his Twitter page. Johal later decided to grab her check and go home, and still had the check in her hand when police found her, Komal said.

“(What) a harsh and cruel world we live in,” he added.

Smith, the youngest of the victims, was last in contact with her family shortly before 11 p.m. Thursday, family members said in social media posts late Friday. Dominique Troutman, Smith’s sister, waited hours at the Holiday Inn for an update on her sister. “Words can’t even explain how I feel. … I’m so hurt,” Troutman said in a Facebook post Friday night.

Weisert had been working as a bag handler at FedEx for four years, his wife, Carol, told WISH-TV. The couple was married nearly 50 years.

President Joe Biden said he had been briefed on the shooting and called gun violence “an epidemic” in the U.S.

“Too many Americans are dying every single day from gun violence. It stains our character and pierces the very soul of our nation,” he said in a statement. Later, he tweeted, “We can, and must, do more to reduce gun violence and save lives.”

A FedEx employee said he was working inside the building Thursday night when he heard several gunshots in rapid succession.

“I see a man come out with a rifle in his hand and he starts firing and he starts yelling stuff that I could not understand,” Levi Miller told WTHR-TV. “What I ended up doing was ducking down to make sure he did not see me because I thought he would see me and he would shoot me.”

Paul Keenan, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Indianapolis field office, said Friday that agents questioned Hole last year after his mother called police to say that her son might commit “suicide by cop.” He said the FBI was called after items were found in Hole’s bedroom but he did not elaborate on what they were. He said agents found no evidence of a crime and that they did not identify Hole as espousing a racially motivated ideology. A police report obtained by The Associated Press shows that officers seized a pump-action shotgun from Hole’s home after responding to the mother’s call. Keenan said the gun was never returned.

McCartt said Hole was a former employee of FedEx and last worked for the company in 2020. The deputy police chief said he did not know why Hole left the job or if he had ties to the workers in the facility. He said police have not yet uncovered a motive for the shooting.

Police Chief Randal Taylor noted that a “significant” number of employees at the FedEx facility are members of the Sikh community, and the Sikh Coalition later issued a statement saying it was “sad to confirm” that at least four of those killed were community members.

The coalition, which identifies itself as the largest Sikh civil rights organization in the U.S., said in the statement that it expected authorities to “conduct a full investigation — including the possibility of bias as a factor.”

Varun Nikore, executive director of the AAPI Victory Alliance, a national advocacy group for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, said in a statement that the shootings marked “yet another senseless massacre that has become a daily occurrence in this country.”

Nikore remarked that gun violence in the U.S. “is reflective of all of the spineless politicians who are beholden to the gun lobby.”

FedEx Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Frederick Smith called the shooting a “senseless act of violence.”

“This is a devastating day, and words are hard to describe the emotions we all feel,” he wrote in an email to employees.

The killings marked the latest in a string of recent mass shootings across the country and the third mass shooting this year in Indianapolis. Five people, including a pregnant woman, were shot and killed in the city in January, and a man was accused of killing three adults and a child before abducting his daughter during at argument at a home in March. In other states last month, eight people were fatally shot at massage businesses in the Atlanta area, and 10 died in gunfire at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett said the community must guard against resignation and “the assumption that this is simply how it must be and we might as well get used to it.”

Source Article from https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/17/fedex-shooting-indianapolis-482650

CHICAGO — Hundreds of people marched through the Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago on Friday evening, calling for overhauls to the city’s police department after the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a police officer in March.

Holding signs reading “Justicia Para Adam” and “We are Adam, defund the police,” a large crowd listened as speakers denounced the Chicago Police Department and Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

Adam was shot and killed by a police officer, Eric E. Stillman, 34, in the early-morning hours of March 29. In video of the shooting, released on Thursday by an independent city agency that investigates police conduct, Adam is chased down an alley by a white police officer, who orders him to stop and show his hands. An analysis of the video, slowing down events that took place in the space of a second, shows the boy then appearing to toss a handgun nearby and raising his hands in the air, just before the officer shoots him in the chest.

Jasmin Cardenas, who attended the march with her two small children, cried as she stood holding a sign supporting Adam and his family. She lives in Little Village, the predominantly Latino neighborhood where Adam was killed, and runs an after-school arts program that once worked with children at Gary Elementary, where Adam was a student.

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/16/us/chicago-police-shooting-protests.html

Some have christened the practice the “hand of God,” and it is now the searing image of a nation roiled by a medical emergency with no end in sight.

“Patients can’t receive visitors. Sadly, there’s no way. So it’s a way to provide psychological support, to be there together with the patient holding their hand,” Melo said. She added: “And this year it’s worse, the seriousness of patients is 1,000 times greater.”

This situation is similarly dire in India, where cases spiked in February after weeks of steady decline, taking authorities by surprise. In a surge driven by variants of the virus, India saw over 180,000 new infections in one 24-hour span during the past week, bringing the total number of cases to over 13.9 million.

Problems that India had overcome last year are coming back to haunt health officials. Only 178 ventilators were free Wednesday afternoon in New Delhi, a city of 29 million, where 13,000 new infections were reported the previous day.

The challenges facing India reverberate beyond its borders since the country is the biggest supplier of shots to COVAX, the U.N.-sponsored program to distribute vaccines to poorer parts of the world. Last month, India said it would suspend vaccine exports until the virus’s spread inside the country slows.

The WHO recently described the supply situation as precarious. Up to 60 countries might not receive any more shots until June, by one estimate. To date, COVAX has delivered about 40 million doses to more than 100 countries, enough to cover barely 0.25% of the world’s population.

Globally, about 87% of the 700 million doses dispensed have been given out in rich countries. While 1 in 4 people in wealthy nations have received a vaccine, in poor countries the figure is 1 in more than 500.

In recent days, the U.S. and some European countries put the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine on hold while authorities investigate extremely rare but dangerous blood clots. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has likewise been hit with delays and restrictions because of a clotting scare.

Another concern: Poorer countries are relying on vaccines made by China and Russia, which some scientists believe provide less protection that those by Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Last week, the director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention acknowledged the country’s vaccines offer low protection and said officials are considering mixing them with other shots to improve their effectiveness.

In the U.S., where over 560,000 lives have been lost, accounting for more than 1 in 6 of the world’s COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and deaths have dropped, businesses are reopening, and life is beginning to return to something approaching normalcy in several states. The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to 576,000, a post-COVID-19 low.

But progress has been patchy, and new hot spots — most notably Michigan — have flared up in recent weeks. Still, deaths in the U.S. are down to about 700 per day on average, plummeting from a mid-January peak of about 3,400.

In Europe, countries are feeling the brunt of a more contagious variant that first ravaged Britain and has pushed the continent’s COVID-19-related death toll beyond 1 million.

Close to 6,000 gravely ill patients are being treated in French critical care units, numbers not seen since the first wave a year ago.

Dr. Marc Leone, head of intensive care at the North Hospital in Marseille, said exhausted front-line staff members who were feted as heroes at the start of the pandemic now feel alone and are clinging to hope that renewed school closings and other restrictions will help curb the virus in the coming weeks.

“There’s exhaustion, more bad tempers. You have to tread carefully because there are a lot of conflicts,” he said. “We’ll give everything we have to get through these 15 days as best we can.”

Source Article from https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/17/worldwide-covid-19-death-toll-tops-a-staggering-3-million.html

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Source Article from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-17/iran-identifies-suspect-in-sabotage-of-nuclear-enrichment-site

All eyes are now on the Kumbh Mela festival, which has continued despite fears the millions of Hindu devotees who attend each year could bring the virus home with them. Some 1,600 people tested positive this week at the gathering in the northern state of Uttrakhand, with pictures showing thousands gathered closely together along the banks of the Ganges river.

Source Article from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-56783878

President Biden promotes his American Jobs Plan during an appearance in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus on April 7. The sheer scale of his early agenda has drawn comparisons to the achievements of FDR and LBJ.

Evan Vucci/AP


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President Biden promotes his American Jobs Plan during an appearance in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus on April 7. The sheer scale of his early agenda has drawn comparisons to the achievements of FDR and LBJ.

Evan Vucci/AP

As we approach President Biden’s 100th day in office at the end of this month, some observers are flattering him with comparisons to two legendary Democratic presidents of the 20th century — Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson.

Those names reportedly came up when historian Jon Meacham convened a group of his colleagues at the White House in early March for a private session with Biden. And since then, the aptness of comparing this new president to such transformative figures of the past has become a matter of some debate in Washington and beyond.

The sheer scale of Biden’s spending and change agenda finds its analog only in the early achievements of FDR and LBJ. But which of those administrations offers the better insight into what is happening now, or what happens next?

Roosevelt, in just his first hundred days in 1933, reversed the tide of U.S. public policy after a dozen years of Republican presidents known for their aggressively pro-business views and their defense of such social restrictions as Prohibition.

Many of the most enduring changes FDR wrought did not come until later. The flurry of reforms and programs launched in his earliest months restructured the banking system and put millions to work. It also restored faith in government action and expanded the role of the federal government in the economy and in citizens’ everyday lives.

Years later, when a visitor to Washington asked to be shown the monument to FDR, he would be told simply to look around at the official government buildings visible in all directions.

The icon’s mantle

The flurry of reforms and programs launched in the earliest months of FDR’s presidency restructured the banking system, put millions to work and expanded the role of government in the economy and in citizens’ everyday lives.

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The flurry of reforms and programs launched in the earliest months of FDR’s presidency restructured the banking system, put millions to work and expanded the role of government in the economy and in citizens’ everyday lives.

AP

Is Biden reaching for the mantle of FDR, or having it thrust upon him?

The new president has already signed into law a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package, the American Rescue Plan, which includes an array of health programs, but also a far-reaching assault on child poverty that exceeds anything since the 1960s.

Moreover, Biden has proposed an even larger $2 trillion infrastructure package — the American Jobs Plan — that would not only rebuild roads and bridges, but build half a million charging stations for electric vehicles, while investing vertiginous sums of money in research and development to modernize manufacturing and retrain workers and to expand home health care, improve broadband and the electrical grid.

“Even if you adjust for inflation and use constant dollars, there is far more money in what Biden is doing than in the programs Roosevelt put in place in his first hundred days,” says journalist and historian Jonathan Alter, author of the book The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope.

These mammoth bills do more than move mountains of money. They are also attempting to re-engineer key aspects of the system. FDR altered the workings of capital and labor in ways that are still very much with us today. Biden may be trying to do some of the same, but the new president’s work has just begun — and his changes have yet to face the test of time.

“It’s difficult for me to conceive that they will be transformational to the degree that the New Deal’s undertakings proved to be,” Stanford historian David M. Kennedy wrote in an email earlier this month.

Kennedy, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000 for his book Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War 1929-1945, cites “just a handful of examples,” including Social Security, banking and labor reforms, housing policies and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which, taken together “materially changed the terms of life for every generation since.”

Kennedy also cited two “domains where transformational change is needed.” Climate is one, and inequality is the other. “If the Biden efforts effect change there, then comparison with the New Deal may well be appropriate.”

The LBJ legacy

President Lyndon Johnson addresses the nation on Dec. 2, 1963. Like FDR, Johnson was able to maneuver his allies in Congress and sequence his moves so that each achievement made the next one more doable.

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President Lyndon Johnson addresses the nation on Dec. 2, 1963. Like FDR, Johnson was able to maneuver his allies in Congress and sequence his moves so that each achievement made the next one more doable.

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The other president whose name is being bandied about, Lyndon B. Johnson, was often compared to FDR in his own heyday. As a Texas congressman, Johnson was a loyal supporter of the New Deal in the 1930s. Later, he rose to Senate Majority Leader before becoming vice president to President John F. Kennedy.

LBJ was able to use the emotional surge that followed Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 to push through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That fall, he not only won a term in his own right but did it with more than 60% of the popular vote, carrying in the biggest Democratic majorities in Congress since, well, since FDR.

That momentum and those majorities helped LBJ achieve an annus mirabilis on Capitol Hill, featuring 70 votes to choke off a filibuster of the Voting Rights Act and then 77 votes on final passage. There were big majorities as well for the creation of Medicare, Medicaid and a host of other “Great Society” programs inspired in part by FDR’s own. There was also a landmark immigration bill that ended quotas by national origin.

And that was not all. Not even close.

Earlier this month, Mark Updegrove, the president of the LBJ Foundation in Austin, Texas, showed a visitor via Zoom the glass cabinet at the LBJ Presidential Library and Museum that holds 50 fountain pens. Each was used on a separate piece of major legislation that was signed into law by Johnson — just in 1965 alone.

Even with the bar raised that high, Updegrove believes LBJ is a better model for Biden than FDR.

“As a candidate, Biden preferred to talk about the New Deal,” Updegrove says. “But if you look at what Biden might be able to achieve, it equates more to LBJ.”

Updegrove has written one book called Indomitable Will: LBJ in the Presidency and another called Trial by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis. He says Biden can emulate Johnson’s feats by using crises that “bubble up” as an opportunity to address a wider range of challenges and deal with their root causes.

FDR entered office in the midst of the worst Depression in U.S. history. LBJ did not have that sort of dire crisis at his doorstep, but like FDR he managed to maneuver his troops and sequence his moves so that each achievement made the next one more doable.

“The remarkable similarity between Biden and LBJ,” Updegrove adds, “is that they’re both creatures of the Senate, they understand the legislative process, they understand the importance of relationships and they understand the ephemeral nature of political capital … They know that’s going to evaporate.”

Comparing crises over time

When President Biden took office, he was greeted by a host of challenges similar in scale and complexity to what FDR and LBJ both faced: a raging pandemic, an economy still reeling and the national mood dominated by grievances.

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When President Biden took office, he was greeted by a host of challenges similar in scale and complexity to what FDR and LBJ both faced: a raging pandemic, an economy still reeling and the national mood dominated by grievances.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Biden’s situation on Inauguration Day was something between FDR’s and LBJ’s. He took the oath with the COVID pandemic raging, the economy still reeling and the national mood dominated by grievances. The former president had refused to concede defeat — and much of the nation stood with him. Millions were shocked by the invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6, but millions had also been appalled by the street protests against police violence the previous summer. And, as a whole, the nation was sick of the constraints and disruptions caused by the virus and the fear of infection.

Stepping in as the national leader at such a dramatic time, Biden has had the chance to at least propose a program for the pandemic, the economy, the society as a whole and the people’s relationship to their government that has the potential to be as transformative as his illustrious predecessors.

But the irony of Biden’s success in dealing with the pandemic, to date, is that doing so raises hope in itself. The economy had begun roaring back well before passage of the relief bill, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 hitting record highs early this month. As the suffering recedes and with it the sense of crisis, Biden may find it more difficult to move Congress the way FDR or LBJ did.

Alter notes that FDR was known for his charm. “People just liked him and wanted to be around him.”

LBJ was often noted for his ability to cajole, harangue and eventually overwhelm anyone who stood in his way. Biden is more easily pictured smiling like FDR than glowering like LBJ. He has probably had as many good relationships with Republicans in Congress as any powerful Democrat has had in the last two or three decades.

But Biden will need more than charm or cogent arguments to match what his storied predecessors did on Capitol Hill. He has nominal majorities supporting him, but Democrats only hold the House by a handful of votes and the Senate is Democratic only with the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Harris.

Steep climbing on Capitol Hill

By contrast, in 1933, FDR had nearly 60 Democrats in the Senate and more than 300 in the House (a number that would continue to rise through his first six years in office). In 1965, LBJ briefly had 68 Democrats in the Senate and nearly 300 seats in the House.

Historians are quick to point out that the Democrats in the 1930s and 1960s were essentially two parties, one of which was from the South. The Democrats’ dominance in Dixie ended in the 1990s, but when it existed it posed problems of its own. Senior incumbents from the South largely ran the Senate, and they often held the key committee chairmanships in both chambers.

“The House Rules chairman could keep a bill from coming to the floor,” Alter notes. “And there was “Cotton Ed” Smith from South Carolina running the House Agriculture Committee and giving Roosevelt fits on farm policy.”

Biden can look to allies in Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who generally lead an unusually unified Democratic contingent in each chamber. But the margin for error is essentially zero. Prospects for help from crossover Republicans are slim on major bills. That is why progressive groups have been calling on Democrats in the Senate to end the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to proceed on legislation.

Role of today’s media

But contemporary American politics pose other problems for a president that neither FDR or LBJ had to face. One is what Updegrove calls “the fragmentation of the media.” In past eras, a few national radio and TV networks enabled a president to speak to the nation as a whole and count on much of it listening or watching.

The fireside chats that Roosevelt commenced the month he was inaugurated were a vital element in selling his program. Both FDR and LBJ generally had good coverage on the news pages of the largest daily newspapers and weekly magazines, even when some publishers and their editorial pages were openly hostile to their policies.

Today’s media still include the legacy publishing and broadcasting operations, but the political conversation is more often driven by cable TV, Internet newsletters and social media. Audiences turn to sources of information they find simpatico and are not exposed to competing points of view. A presidential message may be trumpeted in some news quarters, vilified in others and ignored by more than a few.

So while FDR could get on the radio and speak to “my friends,” and LBJ could be on TV in prime time addressing “my fellow Americans,” the most effective media politician in recent years, Donald Trump, depended on his Twitter feed (now closed) and the cable-TV coverage of his live rallies.

To this point, Biden has not been able to find a comparable conduit to the audiences he will need if he is going to sell his agenda, enact his legislation and find a way to unite a bitterly divided nation. If he is able to accomplish that, it may very well secure permanent status in the FDR-LBJ weight class.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2021/04/17/985980593/can-biden-join-fdr-and-lbj-in-the-democratic-partys-pantheon

A sixth night of protests over Daunte Wright’s killing in Brooklyn Center began Friday as a peaceful demonstration and march — and quickly dispersed after law enforcement descended on several hundred protesters a few hours later.

Despite pleas from elected leaders for police restraint, law enforcement on Friday night took aggressive action against protesters. Several hundred demonstrators had gathered near the police department, but dissipated when officers quickly advanced.

Authorities later said the response was prompted by some protesters breaching one of two fences surrounding the Brooklyn Center Police Department, which has been the epicenter of the week’s protests.

Just a few minutes before 10 p.m., an announcement played on a loudspeaker outside the department, declaring the event an unlawful assembly, and asking people to leave.

Within minutes, in what many in the remaining crowd described as a stunning show of force, law enforcement rushed in to the area to corral the crowd — protesters and media alike — and clear the space in front of the police department.

Flash bangs and sponge grenades were fired into the crowd, and officers pepper-sprayed several protesters who neared a group of officers. Protesters scrambled through yards and over backyard fences to evade a perimeter that authorities had set up for a block around the police department.

By 10:36 p.m., authorities announced that the city of Brooklyn Center had issued an emergency curfew, to begin at 11 p.m.

Earlier on Friday, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott announced that he would not issue a curfew for his city that night, in a change of policy from earlier in the week.

Hundreds of demonstrators have gathered outside the heavily guarded Brooklyn Center police station every night since former Officer Kim Potter, who is white, shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black motorist, during a traffic stop on Sunday. Protesters have shouted profanities, launched fireworks, shaken a security fence surrounding the building and lobbed water bottles at officers. Police have driven away protesters with tear gas grenades, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and long lines of officers in riot gear.

Potter was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter. The former police chief in the majority nonwhite suburb said Potter fired her pistol when she meant to use her Taser, but protesters and Wright’s family say there’s no excuse for the shooting. Both Potter and the chief resigned Tuesday.

A clash over police tactics

Nightly protests earlier in the week were met with force and numerous arrests after they extended past curfew. But by Thursday evening, the scene around the police department was much calmer. Authorities did not issue dispersal orders and allowed the crowd to leave on its own.

At a midnight news conference after the vastly different events of Friday night, Minnesota’s public safety commissioner, John Harrington, said officers were prepared to repeat the same tactics of patience that they deployed on Thursday.

But Harrington said Friday’s law enforcement response, in stark contrast to the previous night, was prompted by the actions of the demonstrators who had gathered around the police department. He laid out a timeline of the evening that included people bringing shields and umbrellas and breaching the exterior fence that had been set up along the perimeter of the Brooklyn Center Police Department.

He said upwards of 100 people had been arrested, but did not yet know what they had been charged with.

Harrington was quick to make a distinction between the peaceful march earlier in the day and the crowd that had gathered after dark.

“This is a night that should’ve been about Daunte Wright,” Harrington said. “Tearing down a fence, coming armed to a protest, is not in my mind befitting a peaceful protest. It is not befitting groups that are there to recognize the tragedy that is the loss of Daunte Wright.”

People who live in the area have said many neighbors are staying in hotels or with relatives to avoid the noise as well as the tear gas that seeps into their homes.

“We can’t just have our window open any more without thinking about if there’s going to be some gas coming in,” said 16-year-old Xzavion Martin, adding that rubber bullets and other projectiles have landed on his apartment’s second-story balcony. “There’s kids in this building that are really scared to come back.”

The police tactics have not sat well with Brooklyn Center city officials, who passed a resolution Monday banning the city’s officers from using tear gas and other chemicals, chokeholds, and police lines to arrest demonstrators.

Mayor Mike Elliott, who is Black, said at a news conference Wednesday that “gassing is not a human way of policing” and he didn’t agree with police using pepper spray, tear gas and paintballs against demonstrators. Elliott didn’t respond to multiple messages from the Associated Press on Friday.

Brooklyn Center police aren’t dealing with protesters on their own. Other agencies, including the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and the Minnesota National Guard, have provided support at the city’s request in a joint effort dubbed Operation Safety Net. The city’s resolution isn’t binding on those agencies.

Hennepin County Sheriff David Hutchinson asked Elliott in a letter Wednesday to clarify whether he still wanted the department’s help. The mayor wrote in a letter Thursday that his city still needs help but pressed assisting agencies not to engage with protesters.

“It is my view that as long as protesters are peaceful and not directly interacting with law enforcement, law enforcement should not engage with them,” Elliott wrote. “Again, this is a request and not an attempt to limit necessary law enforcement response.”

Sheriff’s spokesman Jeremy Zoss said Friday that no agencies have pulled out of Brooklyn Center. Scott Wasserman, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, said Operation Safety Net’s tactics will not change.

Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and commander-in-chief of the Minnesota National Guard, said at a Thursday news conference that he’s concerned about tactics but that police are trying to protect the community.

Judge’s order bars force against media

Journalists covering Friday night’s protests were among those swept up in the law enforcement actions.

Reports of individual members of the media being sprayed with chemical irritants, punched in the face and corralled to a location where they were photographed and “processed” came just hours after a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order barring Minnesota law enforcement from using force or chemicals against journalists covering protests over Daunte Wright’s killing.

In her order, set to last 14 days, U.S. District Court Judge Wilhelmina Wright prohibits law enforcement from including news media in dispersal orders they issue to crowds.

They are also prohibited from using force and chemical agents against news media — and from seizing equipment, including cameras, recorders and press passes.

The ruling came as part of an ongoing case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union last year on behalf of a freelance journalist who alleged law enforcement officers were targeting media during summer protests after the killing of George Floyd.

You make MPR News possible. Individual donations are behind the clarity in coverage from our reporters across the state, stories that connect us, and conversations that provide perspectives. Help ensure MPR remains a resource that brings Minnesotans together.

Source Article from https://www.mprnews.org/story/2021/04/17/law-enforcement-response-swift-on-sixth-night-of-protests

INDIANAPOLIS (NewsNation Now) — The names of the eight victims killed in Thursday’s mass shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx facility were released Friday evening.

Indianapolis Police Deputy Chief Craig McCartt said four of the victims were killed outside the building and another four inside while many employees were on a shift change or dinner break. At least five more victims were taken to the hospital for wounds from the shooting.

Officials said the mass shooting was committed by a 19-year-old former employee, Brandon Scott Hole, who had been reported to police before.

Identities of the 8 killed in the Indianapolis FedEx shooting:

Matthew R Alexander, 32

Samaria Blackwell, 19

Amarjeet Johal, 66

The granddaughter of Amarjeet Johal sent NewsNation affiliate WXIN-TV the following statement:

I have several family members who work at the particular facility and are traumatized. My nani, my family, and our families should not feel unsafe at work, at their place of worship, or anywhere. Enough is enough–our community has been through enough trauma. 

KOMAL CHOHAN

Jaswinder Kaur, 64

Jaswinder Singh, 68

Amarjit Skhon, 48

Karli Smith, 19

John Weisert, 74

This story will be updated as we learn more about the victims.

This is a developing story. Check back soon for updates.

Source Article from https://www.wane.com/top-stories/the-names-of-the-8-victims-murdered-in-the-indianapolis-fedex-mass-shooting/

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler called out the Biden administration Friday for attempting to “spin” its stunning reversal on the refugee cap as mere media “confusion.”

The White House on Friday said that President Biden is expected to increase the refugee cap for this fiscal year, just hours after he signed an order that kept it at Trump-era levels and infuriated congressional Democrats.

“The President’s directive today has been the subject of some confusion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a late afternoon statement.

In response to the latest developments, the Associated Press ran the headline, “After blowback from allies, White House says President Biden will move to lift Trump-era refugee caps next month.”

WASHINGTON POST STANDS BY ‘FOUR PINOCCHIOS’ RATING FOR TRUMP CLAIM RUSSIAN BOUNTY INTEL WAS ‘FAKE NEWS’

The astute acknowledgement of the real reason for the reversal brought praise for the AP from Kessler.

“The WH release actually spun it as ‘confusion’ by the media on the earlier announcement. Kudos to the AP for not falling for the spin,” the head Post fact-checker tweeted. 

The administration announced Friday that Biden was signing an emergency presidential determination to keep the refugee cap at 15,000 while changing the regional allocation of who is brought in — allowing more slots from Africa, the Middle East and Central America, while ending restrictions on Somalia, Yemen and Syria.

It brought immediate and widespread criticism from left-wing Democrats and immigrant activist groups.

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Former President Donald Trump lowered the refugee cap for FY 2021 to 15,000 — a move Biden had pledged to reverse both during the campaign and in his first days in office.

Biden had promised to increase the cap to 125,000 for the next fiscal year, which begins in October. He also said he would work with Congress to make a “down payment” on that number. In the meantime, Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed lifting the cap to 62,000 for this fiscal year.

Fox News’ Adam Shaw contributed to this report. 

Source Article from https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-glenn-kessler-biden-refugee-cap-reversal

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) – West Virginia state leaders say odds are that when you get the COVID-19 shot, you’re likely good to go.

“The odds are so phenomenal that you’re not going to get it back, it’s off the chart almost,” said Gov. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.).

But a small percentage of those who have gotten the vaccine still contract COVID.

State officials announced Friday that 129 people have tested positive for breakthrough cases of the virus, meaning these cases have come from one of the over 480,000 West Virginians to be fully vaccinated.

With cases still popping up, state leaders are still encouraging everyone to get the shot. They say it will give you a level of protection that going without can’t guarantee — even if you’ve had COVID-19 before.

“If we look at case mortality rate among all people, it’s about 1.8 percent of people that test positive for COVID, die of COVID across all ages,” said West Virginia Coronavirus Czar Dr. Clay Marsh. If you look at the vaccines, it is one ten thousandths of a percent of people that die of COVID.

“Even if you have had COVID and recovered from it, you really benefit from the vaccination particularly with the variants,” Marsh added. “Native immunity to the virus is less good than the shot, but the combination of having recovered from the virus and getting the shot is by far the best immunity from all the variants as well.”

According to state leaders, the amount of vaccine doses administered in the Mountain State has dropped to about 84 percent.

Click here for information on how you can access a vaccine clinic.

Copyright 2021 WSAZ. All rights reserved.

Source Article from https://www.wsaz.com/2021/04/16/breakthrough-cases-of-covid-19-reported-in-wv-leaders-encourage-vaccine/

(CNN)A Miami woman has been charged for allegedly threatening to kill Vice President Kamala Harris, according to a criminal complaint filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

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Source Article from https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/16/politics/niviane-petit-phelps-charged-threatening-kamala-harris/index.html